Gardening – Lee Reich

(MOST) TULIPS ARE (NOT) FOREVER

October 1, 2025/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Improve Upon their Native Habitat

Tulips are perennial, but usually not strongly so. Disappointment comes from a spring show that over the years declines to fewer blooms, even to nothing more than tufts of leaves, or less. Only good growing conditions and careful choice of varieties can make these spring bulbs truly perennial bloomers.

Oddly enough, those good growing conditions exist in the Netherlands. There, well-drained, sandy soils and a maritime climate’s cool weather keeps leaves green longer into the season to fuel the bulbs for the following years bloom and early growth. Good fertility, water, as needed, and mild winters also help.

Tulips fields in Bollenstreek area of the Netherlands

Why “Oddly enough?” Because tulips are native to the rugged growing conditions of Read more

AMERICA’S FIRST BOTANIST

September 17, 2025/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Come on Over

Come on over to John’s garden, one of the best around. John Bartram’s, that is. In case you don’t know him — rather, of him — he was America’s first botanist. Carl Linnaeus, who in the 18th century devised our whole system for classifying plants, called Bartram “the greatest natural botanist in the world.”

John’s garden is a convenient stop during any visit to Philadelphia. You’re going to visit the Liberty Bell, aren’t you? The Bartram garden is only minutes away, just south of Center City.

When John bought this tract along the Schuylkill River in 1728, it was rural land skirting the colonial city. His botanizing took him throughout what is now eastern U.S., and his garden was where Read more

MY SAVINGS ACCOUNTS

September 3, 2025/5 Comments/in Gardening, Planning/by Lee Reich

Reasons to Save

I’m saving seeds of some of this year’s juiciest tomatoes and most colorful flowers to plant in next year’s garden. Why? Saving my own seed from year to year gives me a bit of independence from seed companies, which, for one reason or another, may stop offering certain varieties.

Picnic Orange pepper from saved seed

It’s also a way way to maintain an annual supply of seeds that seed companies never offer, so-called heirloom varieties that have been handed down for generations from parents to children and from neighbor to neighbor. Read more

THE TRUTH ABOUT RAIN

July 24, 2025/3 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Plenty of Water Here. Really?

During an entire year, a meager three-hundredths of an inch of rain falls on Arica, Chile, yet halfway across the Pacific in the Hawaiian Archipelago, Mount Waialeale receives a sopping 460 inches. The climate on my farmden, and throughout northeastern U.S., is more or less congenial for growing plants — at least those plants we enjoy in our gardens.

We average about four inches of rainfall each month throughout the year, and this amount complements nicely the inch depth of water per week recommended for most garden plants. Read more

TWO FREE PRUNING TOOLS!

July 16, 2025/9 Comments/in Gardening, Tools/by Lee Reich

Tool Number One

Right now, I have before me a most useful pruning tool, two different kinds of pruning tools, in fact. And they are always with me, even when I sleep. Let’s start with the first: my hands.

I use my hands to rip unwanted stems from plants. This seemingly brutal method of pruning can sometimes do a better job and leave the plant healthier than can a precision cut with pruning shears, even fancy pruning shears. Hand pruning is the best way to get rid of suckers, those overly exuberant, usually vertical stems.

On apple trees, watersprouts poking up along branches are not fruitful, at least not for a few years. Read more

CURE ALL OR SNAKE OIL?

July 9, 2025/3 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Many Uses for Marigold

Gardeners who visit here frequently comment, upon seeing marigold plants growing in and at the foot of my vegetable beds, that I must have planted them for pest control. After all, marigolds are supposed to be one of the workhorses of biological pest control. Plant them and plant pests will be killed or — if they are lucky — merely repelled.

It’s an appealing concept: sunny plants that thwart pestilence and blight even as they brighten the garden with their blossoms. Marigolds greatest claim to pest control fame is their effect on nematodes, an effect documented in numerous scientific studies. Read more

Painting of "Man with a Hoe" Millet (1860)

HOE, HOE, HOE

July 2, 2025/2 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

“Cultivate”??

If I told you that I was stepping outside to “cultivate” my tomatoes, you’d perhaps think I was going out to pull off suckers and tie stems to their stakes. If I told you I was stepping outside to “cultivate” my garden, you’d perhaps imagine that I was going to attend to my tomatoes, perhaps also thin out excess corn plants, prune back my early blooming clematis, and . . . you get the picture. I’m going to take care of miscellaneous things in my garden.

I wouldn’t say I’m stepping outside to “cultivate” my meadow because a meadow doesn’t involve the intimate care needed by a vegetable, a flower garden, or fruit trees or shrubs.

But “cultivate,” when it comes to gardening, is rife with meanings. Read more

RAINY WEATHER: WHY WATER?

June 18, 2025/0 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

Prognastication, Nope

Who can predict the weather? If it happens to be raining cats and dogs as you read this, my words might make you want to pelt me with ripe tomatoes — if you had them yet. Still, I’ll say it again: Timely watering is the way too get the best plant growth from any plot of ground in any season.

Watering usually helps even in wet seasons because all the water that falls in such seasons is not available to plants. Roots need air to function, and a cat and dog rain temporarily drives all the air out of the ground. Roots start to breathe and function well again only after gravity has pulled excess water deeper into the ground. A timely watering will spur plant growth in drier periods between rains.

I’m not making a case for setting up elaborate irrigation systems to water every maple, marigold, lettuce, and lawngrass. (My blueberry bushes and my vegetables are the only plants that are watered regularly, here — as described in my book Weedless Gardening — with drip irrigation on a timer.) Read more

HAVE FAITH, WITH RESERVATIONS

June 11, 2025/0 Comments/in Gardening, Vegetables/by Lee Reich

Sprouts for Your Vegetables

Planting a seed is an act of faith. After all, what could seem more far-fetched than dropping a shrivelled, apparently lifeless speck of something into a hole in the ground, then expecting to return and find growing there a lush, green plant brimming with life. A lack of faith — or maybe it’s just impatience — is what drives some gardeners to set out transplants rather than sow seeds. Of course, plants such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants won’t ripen their fruits in due time if seeded outdoors when the soil is warm enough for germination.

MAY I BORROW YOUR LANDSCAPE?

May 21, 2025/0 Comments/in Gardening/by Lee Reich

No Work Garden Expansion

If you’re feeling that your garden or yard is too small, you can expand your horizons without buying another square inch of property, without even much work. Just borrow some landscape.

“Borrowed landscape” originally appeared in the 17th century Chinese garden treatise Yuanye; the technique was borrowed by the Japanese and shakkei, as borrowed landscape is known, has been frquently used in their gardens. But it can be employed in any garden style.

The idea is to incorporate some elements of the surrounding landscape into your landscape to create the feeling of greater space within your garden. You could reap a feeling of infinite space if that distant element is a mountain or ocean that stretches all the way out to the horizon. Read more